#greenseers

[blankfairy]

the fire spread throughout my bones and stayed

Summary: She knows. Larys never told her of his very first dream, but when his feet found the weirwood he found her, too, dark hair braided over her shoulder, cotton dress stained with smudges of grass and dirt. She’d smiled at him, the way an older sibling should, the way ten-year-old Harwin never did to his crippled nine-year-old brother, and offered to pray to the old gods with him.

Her very presence had been prayer enough.

Or, nine-year-old Larys Strong and his fourteen-year-old half-sister, Alys, have more in common than just a father.

Characters: Young Larys Strong, Young Alys Rivers.

Warnings: Internalized ableism, ableism, ableist language.

read on ao3!

The dreams come in the blackest nights, in a flash of fire and smoke and a spreading pain behind his eyes, thrumming in tandem with his tempest of a heartbeat.

A flash of marbled silver, and two dragons dancing above Gods Eye; Harrenhal consumed by flame. Choking ash and blood spilling blood and blood spilling blood —

When Larys wakes, his skin sheened with sweat, a black bird with three beady eyes bears down upon him, crooning to him in the crackling voice of the Stranger. The only breath that can fill his lungs is thick and dark and acrid.

He does not realize the dream has ended until he feels the grass beneath his bare feet, his cane sinking into the mud, and the bleeding eyes of the weirwood boring into him. The summer air is warm, but he shivers anyways, because the Old Gods have only ever looked through him, never at him.

I’m still dreaming, Larys thinks, but the words pass through him like wind through stalks of ghost grass. The pale light of the full moon filters through the weirwood’s amber leaves, rustling in the wind; their shadows dance upon the earth. He falls splay-kneed in front of the tree.

Alys is behind him.

The old gods tell him. In the muffled footfalls in dirt, in the sound of grass brushing at the hem of her dress. She treads carefully in the godswood; Larys can only think of his brute of a big brother crashing through the trees as if the very land was made for him to desecrate.

She slips beneath the gnarled branches of the weirwood and sits beside him, sparing him no peace. “It happened again, didn’t it?”

Larys glances at her. It must be the hour of the wolf, but Alys’ eyes are bright, as if she hasn’t been sleeping at all; she’s only fourteen, tall and lean, but seems so much older and wiser in the dark.

“No,” he answers in a quiet, low voice.. He gnaws at his lip, even though the maester and his father have told him off for it more times than he can count. He feels the tips of his ears fluster fire-hot.

She knows. Larys never told her of his very first dream, but when his feet found the weirwood he found her, too, dark hair braided over her shoulder, cotton dress stained with smudges of grass and dirt. She’d smiled at him, the way an older sibling should, the way ten-year-old Harwin never did to his crippled nine-year-old brother, and offered to pray to the old gods with him.

Her very presence had been prayer enough.

Alys kneads her fingers into the white roots protruding from the ground, tilting her head. She looks more like him than Harwin does, all bone and willow-thin limbs that seem too long for her body. If he didn’t know any better, if his father hadn’t clout him on the ear the first and only time he’d suggested Alys was his full-blooded sister, he could have believed they had the same mother.

“What did you see this time?”

Her voice pulls at the words lodged in his throat, willing them free, when all Larys wants to do is sit in silence and pretend he’s the normal, no-name second son of Lyonel Strong, who has no clubfoot and doesn’t dream of the future’s fires.

“Harrenhal was…” Larys frowns. If his dreams are true, past and future, as Alys once said, what kind of power does he grant them by speaking them aloud? He rolls his lip between his teeth, harder, and the taste of iron spreads across his tongue.

Alys watches, but doesn’t scold; she only smiles, like he imagines their mother would have, and takes his hand. “We’ll strike a deal. I’ll tell you of my last green dream. You tell me yours.”

Through the darkness Larys sees her eyes, the same shade as sage and pine needles, lined with something black. A streak runs down her lips. She’s staring the same way the weirwood does; the same way the three-eyed raven did each time Larys awoke.

Witch, they call her, the same way they call him Clubfoot, but in front of him he only sees his half-sister, not quite his flesh and blood, but more than a stranger. He and Harwin share parents, but with Alys, Larys shares dreams, and shouldn’t that mean more than having the same mother?

“Okay,” he says tentatively, sighing, trying to ease the weight pressing down upon his shoulders. His breath comes heavy and thick. “You first.”

Alys nearly grins, canine teeth poking into the flesh of her lower lip. “A prince.” The words come from her lips quicker than lightning. “Silver-haired, with sapphire eyes. His great dragon danced above the Gods Eye. Her shadow swallowed the Riverlands whole.”

“I saw our home burn,” Larys sputters, not allowing the air between them breath for a single second. “The flames rose so high they touched the clouds. And— And I saw your dragon, too. I think. There were two. One was red, and…”

“Harrenhal hasn’t burned since Aegon’s Conquest,” Alys cuts in sharply. “We see the past too sometimes, you know.”

“It wasn’t Balerion who burned it, it was…” Larys rubs his fingers together and feels soot between them, mixed with something sticky and wet. The flush spreads to his cheeks “It doesn’t matter. You don’t believe me.”

“I will always believe you, little brother. You saw the past, that’s all.” Alys squeezes his hand. Her smile quivers. He thinks some of the ash rubs off on to her, but when she draws her hands back, the only thing they’re stained with is smudges of dirt. “We must stick together, you and I.”

“I know, sister.” The word is cloyingly sweet on his tongue. Only here, in witness of the gods, are they allowed to share blood and bone and dreams.

“The world will fear us some day, as they did the greenseers of old. You and me and my silver dragon prince.”

Larys nods, but mouth is full of cotton and his eyes heavy. He can only bring himself to look up at the eyes of the weirwood, twisted and scorned, glaring into him. He wipes his hands on his tunic and heaves himself onto his feet without waiting for Alys. Night melts into dawn across the godswood, at the corner of his eye; he wonders if his father would even care if he was found missing from his bed. Alys could go disappear for a moon and no one would bat an eye. He leans on his cane, legs aching and back burning. He tells himself it’s from sitting improperly, but everything has begun hurting more and more as of late.

Alys stands after him, takes his free hand again, and wordlessly they begin the walk through the godswood, back to Harrenhal. Her nails dig into his skin.

If she feels the blood dripping from his palms, or smells the ash clinging to his frame, she says nothing of it.

[martianmeerkat]

Absolutely agree with OP, just kind of want to clarify a few things. Skinchangers are anyone who can cast themselves into the mind of an animal and bond with them, using the animal's skin and senses to do things. Wargs are skinchangers who can specifcally skinchange into dogs or wolves. Canines essentially. So all wargs are skinchangers, but not every skinchanger is a warg.

Skinchangers tend to be similar to the animals they bond with because the man is as much a part of the beast as the beast is a part of the man. It's described that different kinds of people tend to gravitate towards certain animals because of this, and the stronger the bond, the more similar to that animal they become. In the case of Sixskins' well he has multiple kinds of animals, so how he's effected has less so to do with the kind of effect and more so brash and blunt in general. But we also know that direwolves, in particular, are a difficult creature to claim because they're seen as a gift from the old gods. "A second life fit for a king." So there is also a sort of hierarchy among skinchangers based on the bonded animal.

Greenseers are a different arena. You can be a greenseer without being a skinchanger just as easily as you can be a greenseer while being a skinchanger. The difference is that skinchangers are already deeply connected to the magic that sources greenseeing, so they tend to get the hang of things quicker. But it doesn't determine how strong or weak that ability is. Greenseeing is an ability beyond simply connecting to the weirwood network and navigating it, but learning to manipulate it. There are some cases where it's clear greenseeing, other cases there is a price and the glimpses are unclear.

As far as rarity of these skills, I believe it's mentioned to be one in a thousand men are a skinchanger, even if they never discover that about themselves. They could never bond with an animal and never explore that ability, but are skinchangers nonetheless. Beyond the wall, it's noticeably more common because it's not as persecuted as south of the wall. Within the feudal system, it's highly stigmatized, and thus, something that's been left behind. "Beastling" is a word used to describe skinchangers and paint them in unflattering lights. We see this in how Robb's enemies viewed him. He had Grey Wind and had a strong connection with him even though he didn't know he was a warg. People saw that and were scared. It's often frequently missed or simply not discussed that regardless of who Robb married, people wanted him dead, and it was mostly out of fear because he, this 15 year old wolf king, was *winning* against several seasoned battle commanders. They called him beastling and spread rumors that he became a wolf himself sometimes. That he was a vicious savage animal that would show no mercy. This kind of stigma is what helped his enemies gain support (among other things, like the northerners being classed as barbarians and savages).

So, it's not unsurprising that we don't hear of skinchangers frequently south of the wall. That's because anyone who does find this out about themselves would be prone to hiding it. The Starks wouldn't have to hide it because 1) they're former kings of winter, and after Aegon's Conquest, Lord Paramounts and wardens of The North, so the feudal system protects them more than the commonwealth, and 2) it's a maintained precedence that Starks and Direwolves go together. It's their house sigil, and while not every Stark, but a good portion of Starks, have or have had direwolves. To the people, it can easily be boiled down to rich people having exotic pets. So, on the surface, it gives the impression that Starks are the only wargs/skinchangers south of the wall when really they're the only ones with a set of circumstances that actively works to their benefit and allows them to explore their abilities so long as they stay in the North where there aren't other stigmatizations that would work against them.

That being said, there are other noble houses who this similarly works for but to a much lesser extent and is really only rumored to be the case as skinchangers, however noble, have a better chance of survival by hiding what they are.

Greenseers, on the other hand, are much much more rare despite the fact that it's not dependent on being a skinchanger. A lot of the times it does have to do with the fact that greenseeing takes a greater toll on the mind and body than skinchanging, but mostly it's just a difficult kind of magic that's hard to grasp. It's very much possible, like any kind of magic that allows glimpses of the future, that people can learn to utilize that magic. But visions of the future and greenseeing are not mutually exclusive. Thus far, we know of weirwood visions, dragon dreams, shade of the evening, and visions from the Red God in the flames. There's also the greenblood in Dorne and a few other methods in Essos, but these four are the main ones we really see in action in the main series. Thus far, the only of those four that require any kind of bloodline or lineage are dragon dreams, and that's a trait that (by way of implication in Valyrian history) isn't exclusive to dragonlords, but rather a different group of people that also inhabited Old Valyria that occasionally mixed with dragonlords like the Targaryens, but we're mostly seperate.

In the case of Greenseers, much like skinchangers possibly not ever discovering their nature, it's also likely greenseers wouldn't discover it either. Visions and dreams aren't always clear, and sometimes they make no sense at all, so why take heed of a warning you don't know is a warning at all? After all, Jon dreamed of Ned's death before it actually happened, and he was several thousand miles apart. But the dream wasn't clear at all that that's what would happen, so he had no way of putting the two together. Bran knows he's a greenseer because he was told that's what he is. Even though he had been having glimpses of the future before being told, he dismissed most of them. Which makes sense.

But in short, skinchangers and greenseers, much like your point states, are not dependent on being from a particular bloodline. Rather, it's simply happenstance that the bloodlines that happen to be openly skinchangers and greenseers are of the first men because they're the bloodlines that are the closest in connection to the old gods magic and therefore more willing to accept it as magic and not as a fluke.

Why Targaryen fans don't see Nettles not being of Valyrian blood as a really cool opportunity to explore a rich history of why Targaryens are able to so easily bond with their dragons is beyond me. Targaryens weren't even a prominent house of dragonlords within Old Valyria. They're a group of people who were othered even among people similar to them and only survived because of particular traits (dragon dreams) they had that other dragonlords didn't. So what if they're not the only people who can tame and ride dragons? That doesn't make them any less interesting! If anything, it just goes to show that the people who use this argument only like the Targaryens because of the dragons and not because of the rich history, culture, and magic of Valyria or the assimilation and frequent polarization between political and fanatical that the Targaryens seem to dance the line between. Seriously, there's a lot to be invested in about the Targaryens, why are they so upset about Nettles having Sheepstealer (a wild dragon who isn't even from Valyria) as if it makes any of the Targaryen dragons any less of value or interest?

So on Twitter the new “gotcha” by insane Targ stans (in response to the idea that Nettles had no Valyrian blood) is “So that means anyone can warg right?”

And I have never seen a SINGLE fan of House Stark (or the series in general) claim “special blood” is needed to be a warg/greenseer/skin changer. It seems it’s directly related to the individual having connections to the Weirwoods and not due to “bloodline” supremacy.

I also have not seen any Stark fan “mad” at the idea of somebody without “first blood heritage” having these abilities. Which is probably because outside of the rabid Targaryen stans most ASOIAF fans aren’t weirdo bloodline supremacists.

These fans getting upset when it’s point out the text indicates (or at the very least places reasonable doubt) on Nettles being Valyrian says a lot about them. It also says a lot that them that they think the “anyone can warg” is a good gotcha when yeah I 100% am in support of the idea that anyone can warg. Sorry it doesn’t bother me like it seems to bother you.

[jon-sedai]

Thinking about how one of the most important motifs in Dany’s childhood memories is a seemingly nonexistent lemon tree. Or rather, a tree that her memory insists exists where it naturally shouldn’t. And thinking about how, in her last Dance chapter, at a pivotal moment of development, she reflects that while she wanted to plant trees and watch them grow, dragons don’t plant trees. But how funny is it that her narrative ancestor, Princess Daenerys of Dorne, left behind a legacy of planting an entire garden of trees — a place where children of all backgrounds could come and bloom within it? And then thinking back to Dany’s moment in Clash, when she comes upon a barren wasteland. A place that, despite its harshness, has many types of trees growing within it. For a brief moment, she considers staying to nurture and watch it bloom.

Sure, her childhood memories are false. But the lesson isn’t that she doesn’t belong anywhere because she dreams of lemon trees in Braavos, where they don’t exist. Maybe the lesson is that she can plant these nonexistent trees elsewhere.

Lemon trees don’t grow in Braavos, but Dany can grow them wherever she chooses to plant them. And this is something she will have to understand when the Long Night comes. Winter means death. It means the trees will wither and no new ones will grow to replace them. But Dany is the mother of dragons, and her life is tied to the very process of life and death, destruction and renewal. The Long Night will be marked by dead trees that bear no fruit. But that’s okay. Because Dany has spent her entire arc dreaming of trees where there aren’t any. And isn’t THAT the dream of spring?

[polysucks]

this is visenyashill wearing a mask hello can i request bran stark wearing a crown? it can be robb's crown of winter or maybe a new weirwood inspired one? it makes me sad we never saw my boy in a crown in the show and i love the way you draw the starks!!!! thank you <3

I have nothing to back up my hc that bran has curly hair so you’ll just have to trust me on this one

My askbox is always open for requests! You can tip me here on PayPal or you can donate to my (totally free!) ko-fi!

[thewatcher0nthewall]

A thousand and one.

[asoiafartandstuff]

Art of Melissa blackwood with her 3 kids Mya, Gwenys, & brynden rivers also known as bloodraven. made by the great artist @tosquinha

[atopvisenyashill]

Plug me in and turn me on And flip the switch, I'm good as gone It slits my skin, and trips my brain I feel the burn, but I don't feel the pain

[death-of-cats]

Looking at the series, GRRM has set up his main protagonists, the "true" heroes, with paralleling, "false" doubles. With Dany, it's Young Griff/Aegon, the mummer's dragon. With Jon, it's Stannis, the false Azor Ahai. And I would make a prediction that with Bran, the true greenseer-cum-god, his double is going to be revealed as Euron, with his raven dreams and ambitions to achieve godhood himself. Obviously this all depends on what goes down in the next book, but I believe the signs are there.

[ilynpilled]

Your post about jaime addicting to possible kingslaying to the point of killing people with royal blood makes wonder what would his reaction be like when he finds out brienne has targaryen blood 😭

its less about royal blood and more about the possibility of them being a sovereign or proclaiming themselves king so i think brienne is safe. with bran idk jaime is just a meta greenseer or whatever

[hallowed-harpy]

The front represents Bran and Summer - “Prince of the Green, Prince of the Wolfswood”

The back represents Old Nan’s scary stories, which ultimately become Bran’s reality.

Custom asoiaf-themed lockets will restock on Sunday, August 3rd at 10am PST.

http://seaofcuriosities.etsy.com

[asoiafreadthru]

A Game of Thrones, Bran III

Finally he looked north.

He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal.

And his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him.

[ladyofchroyane]

magic in asoiaf is genetic. and that is intresting. and the fact that grrm doesn’t shy away from the implications of this makes me love asoiaf even more.

because it’s very understandable that these people who could ride dragons would see themselves as more gods than men. it’s understandable that the practice of sibling-sibling incest would become common in order to keep this ability in the family/to not lose said ability. it’s also understandable that these people would see their race as superior because they are able to do these things that others could not.

it also makes complete sense that this human civilization collapsed in a horrific magical event due to their own hubris because they saw themselves as gods when they were always only men.

and that is peak world building.

some more peak world building is that the noble houses of westeros also clearly gained power and held onto their power through the use of their magical abilities inherited from their ancestors.

a godlike existence like Garth the Green being the ancestor of all the oldest and most noble of the reach houses makes perfect sense for this world!and it also makes sense that the lords without this ancestry are discriminated against in this region that still holds onto the values their society cultivated in the past in order to maintain their magical superiority, even though most of these noble and old houses no longer exhibit these abilities.

and it also makes sense that these people no longer have access to these abilities as they no longer practice the religion that was centered around these powers; plus their blood is simply diluted at this point as these houses have married into a different ethnic group so often that the magical gene just doesn’t surface anymore.

but the fact that it still matters if you can trace your ancestry back to Garth the Green? peak! peak! peak!

george does such an excellent job showcasing the stagnation of westerosi society here because why should it matter if you’re connected to this magic guy if magic is no longer commonplace? however, it also makes total sense that the ruling class of the reach still harps on and on about this as it’s how they maintain the status quo and differentiate themselves from those they consider lesser now that they no longer have access to magic themselves.

and this is also why it’s very important that the Starks still retain the blood of the first men. because the first men interbred with the children of the forest and other elder races, which is what gave these humans these powers. it’s also worth noting that before the direwolves connected with the Stark children, none of our current Starks were able to awaken their abilities by themselves, which shows that even now they are very far removed from their ancestor who’s genetic makeup gave this bloodline these abilities. and it makes sense that the Starks experienced this slow magical decline because magic itself was declining in the world after the doom of valyria.

another reason for this decline is because Andal culture started heavily influencing the North and slowly changed the way magic was perceived. so now in the present, a warg/skinchanger/greenseer has become something to fear being because that’d make you different and therefore puts your life at risk, which means that there’s now practically no safe environment to cultivate these abilities and no secure way to pass down any knowledge you do have about said abilities.

i can’t help but be reminded about how Jon Snow has rejected his nature and how that has led to the stagnation of his abilities, and then i think about Arya and Bran and how their new environments have led to an astonishing growth in their abilities, which shows that it’s not just genetics that matter, environment is also just as, if not more, important.

i bring all of this up because magic being genetic in asoiaf is not as problematic as people try to make it out as. in real life, sometimes people just have genetic gifts. some people can become olympians, and some people are disabled. some people are born 10 times smarter than the average human, and some people believe that covering their faces in lemon juice would turn them invisible. that is reality. and in this universe, some people have access to magic and some don’t, and it’s all based on genetics. it’s unfair! and that makes it realistic.

not everyone gets to ride dragons and not everyone gets to travel back in time, and that grounds asoiaf, which is what grrm was going for.

and how these societies have organized themselves in response to these genetic abilities and the dangers they pose makes absolute sense. on one hand we have the valyrian freehold, which was a magic hotspot and the people who lived there used magic to propel their society to new heights, and on the other hand we have the seven kingdoms that demonize anyone too different, and all magic practitioners are different from normal humans.

and the fact that george decided to go this route with asoiaf is so juicy to me cause:

we have characters like Varamyr and Euron who use their abilities to commit great evils and we know that their powers have influenced the way they see and interact with others. on the other hand we have characters like Dany who use their abilities to fight against evil violent institutions. and through characters like her we learn how vulnerable fledgling magic practitioners/characters with these abilities are to these older and more dangerous institutions and individuals who are perfectly aware about the knowledge gap between them and these younger characters and know exactly how to exploit them.

so, while it’s understandable that the fandom is uncomfy with the practices and values that grrm has written about, this isn’t bad world building by any means. it’s logical and well thought out. and i truly enjoy that grrm doesn’t shy away from writing about the more worrying aspects and implications of magic being a matter of genetics. i also like how the seven kingdoms and the valyrian freehold are kinda extremes on the matter of magic and how this is/was detrimental to both of these societies and at the individual level. a horrific magical firey doom is not any better nor any worse than a slow drawn out icey decline.

imo, what is important to remember is that in the world of asoiaf, people with magic are the ones who are discriminated against (bc most POV characters are in Westeros and magic is a no no there). so they are the ones who are in danger if they out themselves as magic users. now, it is true that some societies are more tolerant (Qarth is a great example of this and Valyria before the doom was likely the most tolerant to have ever existed in this world), but as of now most societies simply aren’t. remember jojens warning? he didn’t pull that out of his ass. bran would’ve been in a lot of danger if he came out and told the wrong people about his dreams/abilities. also, jon’s assassination may have been partly motivated by the mutineers fear of wargs. this is the life-threatening danger magic practitioners are in for simply existing in an intolerant society.

tbh the reason i typed all this up is because it’s very annoying when people try to ignore the reality, which is that the dragonbond depends on genetics. now, i’m sure there are other ways to ride a dragon, as dragons are magical animals so of course there may be a one in a million chance of a dragon allowing some rando to ride it, but this doesn’t change the fact that there is such a thing as a genetic ability that gives these certain humans the ability to form a connection with a dragon.

(another example that i can’t help but remember is that melisandre was able to get ghosts approval by using some of her tricks. of course there could be other reasons for ghost to have done this, but the most likely reason is that ghost simply fell for melisandre’s trick and this influenced how jon saw mel. but this doesn’t change the fact that melisandre will never have the kind of bond jon and ghost have because melisandre is not a warg. this is also another example of how vulnerable fledgling magic practitioners are to older ones.)

so, sorry not sorry that george decided to create a realistic representation of what a society would look like if only certain bloodlines were able to ride dragons <\3.

[catofoldstones]

I am too dumb for the asoiaf tumblr fandom and I am too level-headed for the asoiaf reddit fandom, where do I go?

[iceywolf24]

Thinking about how a thousand eyes and one is used as a threat by Bloodraven to inspire fear

A thousand eyes, a hundred skins, wisdom deep as the roots of ancient trees - Bran III ADWD

Bran also thinks of his powers as using a thousand eyes after Bloodraven tells him about it.

"If Robb has to go, watch over him," Bran entreated the old gods, as they watched him with the heart tree's red eyes, "and watch over his men, Hal and Quent and the rest, and Lord Umber and Lady Mormont and the other lords. And Theon too, I suppose. Watch them and keep them safe, if it please you, gods. Help them defeat the Lannisters and save Father and bring them home." - Bran VI AGOT

A leaf drifted down from above, brushed his brow, and landed in the pool. It floated on the water, red, five-fingered, like a bloody hand. "… Bran," the tree murmured. - A Ghost in Winterfell ADWD

It ends up being Bran watching over Theon and helps him remember he's not Reek but Theon Greyjoy.

"I dreamed of Bran," Sansa had whispered to him. "I saw him smiling." - Eddard V

There was something wild about a godswood; even here, in the heart of the castle at the heart of the city, you could feel the old gods watching with a thousand unseen eyes. Sansa had favored her mother's gods over her father's. She loved the statues, the pictures in leaded glass, the fragrance of burning incense, the septons with their robes and crystals, the magical play of the rainbows over altars inlaid with mother-of-pearl and onyx and lapis lazuli. Yet she could not deny that the godswood had a certain power too. Especially by night. Help me, she prayed, send me a friend, a true knight to champion me - Sansa II ACOK

Here's a moment of Sansa thinking of a thousand eyes and it does give her some comfort in the same godswood she dreamed of Bran.

In contrast to Brynden, Bran's thousand eyes inspires hope and bravery.

[determined-wolfworm]

I Can See Things That Happened In The Past

[thewatcher0nthewall]

Leaf